A Harp in Hock

John Gage loves Ruth West, but she marries his friend, Charles Grey. The young couple are apparently happy; a child is born to them. Suddenly Ruth discovers that her husband has been systematically robbing his employer. Threatened with imprisonment unless he refunds the money he has stolen, Grey is at his wits' end.

Out of the talk at the Sportsmen's Club arises a wager between the globe-trotter and his friend, who bets that he will not be able, within a fixed time, to find his way out of an isolated mountain location to which he will lead him.

Two road agents hold up the stagecoach and rob the passengers. In making their getaway, one of the road agents is shot by the stage driver. They stop at a lonely cabin, where a miner's widow lives with her little daughter, and ask for aid.

While packing her trunk preparatory to leaving home for the adjoining county, where she has been called to teach, the young schoolteacher discovers that one of her rings is broken. Her father volunteers to have the ring mended and bring it to her. On her first day at school a new pupil is enrolled, the motherless daughter of a resident, who personally escorts the child to school. The acquaintance thus begun ripens into love. The girl's father writes that he is coming to visit her. He does not come, but is brought in, dead, by men who have found his body on the trail, a victim of bandits. When the girl resumes her school work, her lover's daughter, among others, brings her a little token of sympathy.

The old inventors daughter is a mission worker. She makes a convert of a young crook and eventually becomes engaged to marry him. But her father does not approve of him, and shows him the door when he learns from a detective the record of his daughter's suitor. The inventor's plans are stolen by an unscrupulous manufacturer, and the crook volunteers to recover them.

Bruce Larnigan finds himself so bitterly opposed by the administration that he resigns his office as District Attorney. He enters into an agreement with Editor Nash of the Independent, whereby he intends to continue his attacks on the criminal trusts through the press. His first effort is directed against the combine of the grain interests and the subsequent raising of the price of bread. His investigation takes him to Chicago. Stone immediately has a tough character, known as "Red Mike," sent after him with instructions that he must prevent the return of Larnigan if possible, but there will be no reward unless the fatality "looks like an accident." 4th episode of the Graft serial. All now lost.

Wealthy young Charles Carpenter is pressured by his family to marry Suzanne, even though he is really in love with young "flapper" Valerie. He gives in to his family's pressure, however, and marries Suzanne, after which Valerie leaves town. Years later, after Charles and Suzanne have had a child, Valerie comes back to town and Charles realizes he is still in love with her, and she with him. Complications ensue.

In a wealthy society family, the mother is forced to sit by and watch while her husband and son both compete for the affections of a pretty young temptress.

Author Ramon Valentine lives in the slums looking for inspiration for his novel, but finds life threatening danger instead.

Upon the death of his wife, George Blake, an attorney, leaves the east. He first places his pretty young daughter, Lucy, in a convent. After traveling for a few years from place to place, in an endeavor to find some location which he might be happy in, he settles in Lariat Hollow, a mining town. He soon falls in love with a woman of the dance hall named Anne. This incites the jealousy of Larkin, the political boss of the town. To break George Blake, Larkin nominates him for mayor, purposing to have him defeated. Anne suspects the plot and tries to influence Blake to refuse the nomination. But Blake has given his word to enter the contest and goes in to win. Blake's daughter writes to her father that she wishes to remain in the convent and become a nun. The father gives his consent. Now with every eastern tie severed, he asks Anne to marry him. She accepts, but says they will wait until after the election.

The plan is this: a foreign man of war is interned in the harbor. By blowing up this boat, Carney figures that strained relation existing between this country and warring nations will snap and the United States will be drawn into the conflict. This would mean untold orders and profit for the Steel Trust. Stone and Carney plan to carry out the plot with aid of an eccentric inventor named Bill Bean. #7 in the Graft serial.